Nobody Is or Should Be the Natural

Last updated on: May 29, 2016 at 2:36 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Nobody Is or Should Be the Natural 2016-05-29T02:36:45-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Some movies make me stop and watch them, even if I have seen them, maybe especially because I have seen them. One of those movies is The Natural with Robert Redford and Glenn Close. You could teach quite a few seminars on this

Robert_Redford_Cannes_opt Shakespearean comedy, it’s that profound, but it revolves around one truth:

Nobody is good enough without someone else.

There is no “natural.” Great gifts are not uncommon. There is, somewhere in the United States, a farm boy who can throw the ball fast and can strike out this year’s star. The next movie star is growing up in some city some place just now without knowing it. Talent is necessary, but something more is needed.

The film has the “father figure” suggest several additions to being “the natural” including concentration, but the hero must choose the right company to be who God made him to be. The wrong people destroy him, but let Glenn Close stand up at the game and a home run is sure to follow.

That is Hollywood, but it is also true.

When the Bible says not to forsake the assembly of the brothers and sisters, the mistake is to think this is a new duty. It is a necessity. Why? The natural needs the catalyst to talent: the person who steers the hero into the proper path instead of allowing him to waste what God has given him.

Put negatively, bad company corrupts good morals. Some people make us less than we might be by pulling us down. Too often this is framed as “negativity,” but truthfully it is about morality.

The best people for us encourage us to be our best moral selves not merely our most cheerful selves. They pull out our natural talent at just the right times and make us greater than we could be alone. If King David rules, then something great will happen if King David chooses to hang out with his mighty men and not mope about the roof of the palace alone.

Today too many of us think that “negativity” is the problem and avoid friends who contradict us or who pull us down. Sometimes we need to have a friend “harsh on our mellow.” The real friend looks at our natural talent and says: “Not enough. Stop being wretched.”

Sin destroys natural ability. We can hear lectures on sin or we can stop hanging with people who make it likely that we will sin. We can find those who are striving for God’s best.

To wish to be the “best there ever was” at anything is too little. Instead, we should wish to be the best “us” that God has made us to be. There is not best “me” . . . just a best “us.”

I would not be “natural,” but take the natural and allow God and His church to make it supernatural . . . only that way can I see wonders.

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